To be an Astronaut and Other Negligible Oneshots
by Em's New Name
Summary: This is a collection of short stories about varying topics. The first is not "To be an Astronaut," but Sam Phantom. I have not finished that yet. So look forward to time-jumps, alternate universes, doctor appointments, captured ghosts, captured Danny, astronauts, and more in this story. Ratings may reach T, so please look for the warnings. Updates will be irregular.
1. Sam Phantom

**Disclaimer: I do not make money off of writing this. It is completely fan-made, and all rights go to their respective owner(s).**

Summary: Sam imagines the accident going differently, early in her freshman year.

Rating: Teen? Kid friendly? I don't know.

Genre(s): angst, adventure

 **Sam Phantom**

What if…?

"So are you going in there or not?" Sam asked her two greatest friends.

Danny shook his head and waved his hands. "Absolutely not. I would know the hazards of this room."

Tucker squirmed away from the dark hole in the wall. "Not unless the ghost expert in the room does. And he's not. Have fun in there yourself, Sam. I'll just keep watch for his parents."

Sam raised her eyebrows when she turned around, wondering when they would stop her. Danny should have, having said what he did. But he didn't.

She entered the space, without changing into something safer, because it wouldn't matter. The thing was unresponsive in the first place.

It was amazing- and it was utterly depressing. In it lied the dead hopes and dreams of an insane couple whom she looked up to with a great respect. The entire machine was the make it or break it part of their career.

It's walls almost seemed to press down on her, which was strange, because she wasn't claustrophobic.

Sam tripped on a wire almost instantly, in her adventure into the would be ghost zone, and had to slap a hand onto a wall for support, hitting a button. The machine's whirring noise, saying it was starting up came and went, but she couldn't get out. Her boots were stuck in the mesh of wires. Danny and Tucker didn't know what to do when they heard the noise.

Ectoplasm shot out from small pores in the walls, ceiling, and floor around her. The electrical part of the machine sent small currents of electricity into her skin. She was going to die. There was no doubt about that.

But then she kicked the wires away, and the portal, which she now knew was pulling her out of itself, threw her back into the lab.

She was alive but not the Sam everyone knew. She wore white and yellow clothing (red replacing the hardly noticeable green that had been in her skirt), instead of black and purple. Her facial features were the same, but instead of black hair and purple eyes, they were again, ashen and gold. This was Sam's ghost.

Danny and Tucker rushed to her sides and almost fainted. They'd killed her. They didn't know how to comprehend it.

She was awake and looked into the shiny surface of the metal tables, almost passing out.

A white-blue light flashed around her and when it left, Sam, the Sam everyone knew, was in the ghost's place.

She guessed then that she was half human, still, and despite it all, laughed to herself, as a coping mechanism. She was both living and dead. She probably had ghost powers. The people she didn't like would face small pieces of her wrath everyday from then on and no one would suspect her.

Sam didn't know what was going on, but she felt that everything was going to be just fine.

No, that's a little silly, she thought to herself. She wouldn't know a thing. She would probably just faint like Danny had. But then, she wasn't the ghost child of ghost _hunters_.

"Miss Manson, do you know the answer?" a voice broke her day dreaming.

"Uhh," she shook her head, vaporizing any stray ideas from her distraction. "Yes. Antinous...?"


	2. That Thing Called Art

Woo! Update already!

 **Disclaimer: I do not make money off of writing this. All rights go to their respective owner(s).**

 **Summary: Paulina is an artist who's obsessed with the ghost boy. When she wonders about his human life, she brings it upon herself to do an art project on just that.**

 **Genre(s): mystery?, general**

 **Rated: K**

 **That Thing Called Art**

Paulina Sanchez has been viewed as many things: self-centered, beautiful, amazing, shallow, popular- anything but what she really was. Sure, she was everything the world saw her as, but no one saw her as an artist. And what a talented artist she was.

She'd always chosen art and cheerleading as her two electives. Cheerleading because it was fun and it made her more likeable. Art because it was easy and it wouldn't make her look like a nerd as extra computer classes would have. And because it was something she enjoyed if she found something to do with it. And since the ghosts first started showing up, she'd found herself with so many artistic options.

Paulina was in her bedroom doodling the ghost boy's most recent fight. On the bed beside her was an open box of art supplies. Her television was paused, showing a clear image of the battle between him and a tin-man called Skulker.

She smiled. He's protecting them. Everyone. And all the boys love her. She didn't see why this boy wouldn't. They'd make a perfect couple, in her eyes. She could even imagine the wedding, becoming Danny and Paulina Phantom.

Except he's dead. It would be a weird relationship. Many people probably wouldn't accept it, not to mention law and what not. Besides, being a ghost, he would scare too many people half to death, when they would go out of town. It'd be tricky, but Paulina was sure they would figure it out.

Her thoughts on the set backs brought her to briefly wonder about his human life. She'd done this a few times before, but didn't think too deeply about it. He wasn't living anymore. That was that, and there's nothing she could do about it.

Paulina pushed her focus from her imagination back to her drawing. Distracted by her thinking, she'd absentmindedly drawn him with legs, which wasn't the case in the image on the screen. The screen showed a boy with what may appear to be an eel's tail for the bottom half of his body.

"Heh. Guess I'll never get used to drawing ghosts," she muttered, erasing the lines not meant to be there. That again reminded her of his human life. He sure doesn't look like some normal person would. Sure he's a ghost, but... He's a ghost.

That's when Paulina _really_ thought about his human life.

None of the creatures the boy fought looked _normal._ And he didn't either. They must've looked different as humans. But what did they look like? No. Paulina didn't care what _they_ looked like. Just _him._ Just the ghost boy.

Slowly, she became aware of the notebook and mechanical pencil in her hands and lap again, and an idea popped in her head. She'd draw him- human.

Paulina flipped to the next clean page and pulled open the side table's drawer, which contained newspaper cut-outs of him.

Throughout her large stack, she managed to find a photo of her crush that wasn't too close that it was blurry, or too far that no detail could be seen. It wasn't in color, but the tv in front of her could give her the basics. It'd do fine.

She placed it on her bedding above her notebook and began studying the handsome face as she had done plenty of times before, partially for the portrait, partially since she had another chance to admire him again.

Memories from a class on drawing faces rushing back to her, Paulina picked up the book once more and drew a wide oval- so wide, it was almost a circle.

Then she drew lines that cut into the sides of her "circle," squishing the shape, in a sense. That formed Phantom's high cheekbones and round chin. Erasing the original marks left botches but Paulina told herself that this was just a plan. A sketch. Nothing to present to a king and demand money for.

Underneath the head, she placed two lines moving outward to form the neck and shoulders.

Carefully, Paulina used a tracing method in which she keeps her eye on the shape she was copying, not looking at her work, to get his messy, spiking hair. A tricky way to accomplish the task at hand, but after years of using the procedure (at more complex levels, each time) in the class, it was bound to get fairly easy at some point, right?

Once she got to the end of his hairline, she looked down at her work, satisfied with herself. Not perfect, but not bad.

Next, she subjected herself to a pretty easy facial feature- the nose. It was narrow until it pushed itself upward at the end. The first time she copied this, it came out just a little too small, the second being just a bit too large. Eventually she got it right, but left smudges surrounding the figure. It made her want to rip it for it being messed up, but she reminded herself that it was a rough draft. Just a sort of experiment.

Huffing in annoyance at the mistake, Paulina moved on to his cheeky grin. It was large, but didn't show any teeth. It curled up in pride and joy, at the corners, unaware of the camera flashing. She sketched the shape of that and moved on, happy to not have any problems in doing so.

Then she got to the hardest part in drawing a person (in her opinion)- no. Any _animal._ The eyes.

Reminding herself that it's just a rough draft, she bit her lip and forced herself to proceed. She drew two small ovals, and got really ticked when she noticed one was smaller than another. Paulina expired and erased the smaller of the two, creating more smudges. She groaned at the marks.

"I'm ruining it!" she whined, but didn't start over. She put circles (as the irises) inside these shapes and two colored in circles inside those. Paulina added a pair of lines just outside of these to give the proper image of eyeballs and tear ducts. She scribbled in hundreds of tiny lines as the eyelashes.

She wasn't satisfied with them but let it slide ready to move on to the next stage. With the eyes (poorly) drawn, she was ready to put in his thick eyebrows.

Getting a good look at the placement and shape, she noticed that unlike his strange white hair, the newspaper clipping showed him with black eyebrows. Paulina realized that she'd never paid much attention to that, turning her head to the television to back the picture up on this information. He really did have black eyebrows...

She shook her head, telling herself to worry about that next and drew them in quickly, excited for the part she'd been waiting for during this whole mission. Color. It was really the only thing _different_ about his looks. Aside from the weird glowy thing.

She reached inside her box and pulled out the crayons. They weren't anything special. Just a simple pack of twenty or so crayons anyone could buy at a gas station.

She got out the black and colored in the eyebrows and the already filled in pupils.

She briefly pondered what dye his hair should be when it came to her. Paulina felt like smacking herself. Black. _Duh._ His brows were black so his hair should be too. She tinted the outline at the top of his head.

"Ha! So far, still not a very colorful person!" she laughed, but was unnerved by how familiar he looked- and not because he was the love of her life, Danny Phantom.

She reached into her collection of hues aiming for a green, but stopped to think about it more. His hair changed color at death- to its opposite. So why couldn't the eyes, as well?

She'd have to find another tint. What was the opposite of green? (Following the hair pattern.) If she remembered correctly, that was red, which was _not_ an eye color. She couldn't even recall a ghost with red eyes. But she could recall his ectoplasm being the same hue as his eyes...

Oh, this boy was one mystery after another!

Looking back at the work she'd already done, Paulina, again, decided not to give up and keep going.

Eye color, eye color, eye color… what could Phantom's have been? Wasn't there some news story about that on a slow week? Where someone described him using his ice powers, his eyes turned another shade. She figured that blue made the most sense for that color, as she didn't record those on her television to refer to.

At first she couldn't choose between navy or sky, but then she decided his eyes were as bright as the glow surrounding all ghosts- might as well go with the lighter of the two.

It was as she was filling in the irises that she realized the ghost boy looked _really, really_ familiar. She quickly finished and looked over the rough sketch.

Black hair. Blue eyes. The same face. But it wasn't her love. It was someone else she knew.

"Did I just draw… Fenton?"

What did this mean?

Okay, so how can every person in Amity be so clueless? Still, he really should have worn a mask.


End file.
